


variables: infinite, accuracy: unknown

by perpetualskies



Category: Bastille
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sunshine (2007), M/M, RPF, Sunshine (2007) - Freeform, and hoping for the best, this is me crossing a tiny fandom with an even tinier one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 04:37:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2638343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetualskies/pseuds/perpetualskies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyle asks, “Where do you want to go?” and Dan blurts out, “Piccadilly Circus,” in a way that would sound parodic if they were anywhere but 60 million miles away from home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	variables: infinite, accuracy: unknown

**Author's Note:**

> I don't mean to scare y'all away but there need to be some notes with this one (｡･ω･｡):
> 
> Ok, so if you don't know the film at all (which I assume for most of you), here is a rough overview of where we stand at the beginning of the story (taken from the film's wiki article):
> 
> “In 2057, the failure of the sun starts a solar winter and threatens Earth. Humanity, in an attempt to reignite it, loads a massive stellar bomb onto a spaceship named Icarus II. The ship is the second and final attempt to save mankind, as the first mission, the Icarus I, was lost seven years previously for reasons unknown. After leaving the range of Earth communications, Icarus II Communications Officer Harvey discovers the distress beacon of Icarus I while passing Mercury. As the stellar bomb's operation is purely theoretical, physicist Capa recommends to Captain Kaneda they change course; since both bombs depleted all of mankind's fissile resources, a rendezvous with Icarus I would allow two attempts.”
> 
> Without wanting to spoil too much, things pretty much go to shit after that.
> 
> Cassie is the pilot, Corazon the biologist, Searle the physician/psychologist, Kaneda is the Captain, Mace the engineer, and Trey the navigator. Our dear Dan takes on the role of Capa the physicist. (Kyle is _not_ Harvey, he's just the communications officer, I guess, since there is no other position left, but it doesn't really matter for the story.) Of course the story relies on more than just this overview, but it should definitely be enough to be able to follow the plot.
> 
> Other than that, I simply hope you enjoy. This has been written quite a while ago and it's _time._ ♥ Concrit is always welcome.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction and means no disrespect towards the parties depicted within. Please do NOT share this with the band or anyone associated with it, or spread it around anywhere. (That includes posting links to this on any other site (like twitter etc.) or tweeting the band about it or any other crap like that.)

Some nights, Dan just can't believe they all agreed to get on a ship called _Icarus II_ after the first one didn't come back already. Most of the nights, he knows it would have been irredeemable if they hadn't.

 

A lot of it is just waiting. Waiting for status reports and CME readings, for psych checks and kitchen duty; waiting to cross into _truespace _, as Cassie calls it, beyond the reach of any of Earth's communicational systems. The solar wind is high, higher than anticipated at this point, and it makes everyone a little jumpy, anxious to have their communication packages ready, although, technically, the dead zone is still another week away. One of those nights, which is a redux of most of their nights, really, Kyle comes by his room, and they send their last messages off together.__

Dan doesn't ask whom Kyle is writing to even though he wants to. They don't talk about what they left behind; you see, they might still come back.

 

The payload feels like an old friend, one that he built himself, out of humanity's last hopes and dreams and fissile resources the mass of Manhattan; a lot of rubble, a _lot_ of sins. 

The test runs are smooth, assuaging in their continuity. Sometimes Kyle comes by and watches them with him. “Very little will happen at first,” Dan begins to explain, waiting for the hologram blue of the ignition spark, and Kyle listens and nods, and laces their fingers together when they stay for a little longer afterwards, relishing the presence of something much much greater than them.

 

Kyle wakes him up early one morning, motions for him to keep quiet, and answers none of the questions that Dan keeps asking nonetheless. Dan huffs, but resists the urge to try and pry it out of Icarus. The corridors are empty, half lit; a couple of hours before alpha shift the ship is as quiet as it gets. 

Dan raises his eyebrows when they halt in front of Searle's office, but Kyle just shakes his head. 

“You said you've never been, yeah?”

“Never been what?” Dan asks and scrunches his eyebrows together, but Kyle has already moved past him. Inside, he is busy punching commands into a control panel, while behind him the monitors of the Earth Room light up one by one. Dan eyes him sceptically.

“And Searle is ok with that?”

“Sure,” Kyle says and beckons him forward, and Dan rolls his eyes, but steps in nonetheless. 

Kyle's right: Dan hasn't been. Felt it would do him no good. Dug his hands into the patches of Corazon's garden instead – _Earth Room_ , get it? 

Kyle asks, “Where do you want to go?” and Dan blurts out, “Piccadilly Circus,” in a way that would sound parodic if they were anywhere but 60 million miles away from home. 

London is its grand, imposing self, the junction lavish and effervescent, and Dan steps closer, hand outstretched, watching as waves of morning commuters cut surface and dissipate into the side streets. 

It's bleak, the clouds hanging low over their heads. There is no sun in the sky. “Home sweet home,” Dan says wistfully, and drops his hand to his side.

Kyle changes the module and they're in the middle of a rocky landscape curling along a strip of deserted beach. Occasionally, a leisured turquoise wave skims the shore; Icarus supplies the cry of a faraway seagull. Dan looks over to the menu and reads _Cabo Mondego, Portugal._

“Family holiday when I was a kid,” Kyle explains sheepishly.

They stay for a long time, jumping between modules, going wherever comes to mind. Durban. Leeds. Sognefjorden. London again. Atlantic Ocean. Coney Island. 

They sit back to back, watching the images glide across the high resolution screens. “Thank you,” Dan says quietly, brushing his fingers against Kyle's. “Really.”

“Just don't tell Searle,” Kyle says, and they're both laughing.

 

Something else in the back of their mission hive mind: the carefully poised number of oxygen tanks to fill, outwards, earthbound, maybe a little extra laugh somewhere along the way. Sixteen and a half months in, the report says they're boarding on overproduction, and it _does_ take the edge off of things just a little bit.

Dan enjoys helping Corazon in the Oxygen Garden; she is patient when he forgets plant names and _sometimes_ lets him hold a sapling. He sets up part of his workstation next to the herbary, against the background noise of fake rain and the low hum of the CO2-harvesters, their movements ceaseless, imperturbable, one rotation for each breath Dan takes.

 

Mercury is a landmark, a notch in the collective consciousness of the crew, and it shows. One week is going by with all of them gathering in the observation room, watching as Icarus swings into orbit, laughing and joking about shore leave, and another with Mace splitting his lip because – well, Dan doesn't know, really. He comes by to apologise later, wordless, hands digging deep into the pockets of his work overall, and Dan shrugs it off, _it's fine, it's ok._

His lip still stings and tinges, but he can't shake the feeling that Mace is dealing with all this better than the rest of them precisely because he _is. dealing with it._

 

“Icarus says you're not getting enough sleep.”

Dan shrugs. “Icarus is a fucking _snitch_ , then,” he says, and Searle laughs and sighs at the same time.

Dan knows all of this is being recorded. For protocol reasons, for research. _For when they get back._ He doesn't mind most of the days. Today – 

Searle pushes a small vial across the table and Dan pointedly pushes it back.

“What about Kyle?” 

“What about him?” Dan snaps, and Searle raises his eyebrows. 

If he's lucky, he will not watch him starve, or suffocate, or burn to death. If he's very _very_ lucky, he'll be somewhere else when it happens, and that's all he's asking for at the moment.

 

Dan jerks awake in the middle of the night, a deadlock feeling in his chest, mind stuttering out broken images of the sun. Slowly, he tries to ease back into his own consciousness. It takes a while; the room around him is not his own.

Gradually: Kyle's arm slung loosely around his waist; a bookmark tucked between the pages where Dan must have dozed off; light left conveniently on 8 percent. _Shit_ , Dan thinks, and falls back against the cushions. 

“Icarus?”

“Yes, Dan?” Her voice matches his whisper. Remember: nothing is off record. 

The pleasant near-darkness is soothing against the sulphuric yellow behind his eyelids. Kyle's knee along his thigh, moving an inch. In the waning consciousness a memory resurfaces: first year of college, front door steps littered with paper cups, laughter filtering through the night, contagious. Greg is taking picture after picture, “Or you won't remember this.” He remembers it all.

 

***

“We'll make the most informed decision we can,” says Kaneda, and it takes a while for Dan to realise they're all looking at him. 

Dan doesn't need to run the sim but he does it anyways, four times, and a fifth one for the captain. 

“It's like flipping a coin,” he states, frustration seeping in between the words. Icarus refuses calculations past a certain point, so how is _he_ supposed to –, but Kaneda simply says, “Then flip it.”

Afterwards, Cassie comes by to tell him she thinks he made the right decision. Mace looks like he wants to drown him in mainframe coolant but he keeps it to himself, and Dan appreciates that. 

Kyle – 

Dan spends a lot of time trying to think about nothing, before deciding that, right now, _something_ is a much better alternative.

 

On the observation deck, Dan shields his eyes even though the filter really isn't set all that low.

“Hey,” he says, and drops down next to Kyle, gaze riveting on the dying star before them: seventh year in the cycle, hollow orange glow primed like a weapon. A cluster of sun spots is stretching across the molten surface, another trailing not far behind. Dan closes his eyes and watches them inch across his retinas instead.

“You know, Icarus emits the signal automatically in case of emergency,” Kyle says after a while, not looking at him. “There might be nothing there.”

Dan sighs. Suddenly, he's not sure why he came here at all. His leg jumps nervously. He makes to get up, but Kyle catches him by the wrist, apologetic.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like –”

He pulls him in and Dan curls into him easily, eagerly, away from the blotched surface of the sun. 

 

Somewhere down the length of the ship Trey is making the calculations necessary to adjust their trajectory. Corazon is collecting herbs in the garden; she's on kitchen duty for the week and it is always a treat. Later that night, Kyle will mouth a dragged out apology across the jut of his collarbone, and the weight of their heuristic little mission will feel a bit less braying for a while. 

In the muted darkness of the room, Dan lies awake and thinks of another Icarus and another stellar bomb and all the things that he never dared ask for that could now happen. Amidst all the possible world-scenarios playing out in his head there are flashes of a homecoming, the moon stations first, then the cloud-dabbed blue of the Earth, blurry upon re-entrance. 

_Darkness is the absence of something, but light – it envelops you._ Kyle's fingers splayed across his ribcage, one of his rings warm now against his skin.

Dan reaches for the light.


End file.
